A new study model for Arabic Sufi prose

ABSTRACT

This paper sheds light on Arabic Sufi prose from the third/ninth to the seventh/thirteenth centuries. It begins with the “Sufi act,” a wide range of conditions that the Sufi embarks upon under the influence of the mystical states in his life, codes of behavior, interactions with others as well as his writing skills and activities. The paper then proposes a general study model for approaching Sufi prose based on its complex links with both the Sufi act and Arabic literary art during early medieval Islam. This model is based on two dominant features. The first captures the spiritual basis of the mystical moment (“texts with lived-experience features”), and the second describes more “rational” attempts to canonize the Sufi experience (“texts with post-experience features”). These features are not strict paradigmatic categories but, rather, indicators to discern the general tone, style and discourse structures that dominates each text.

KEYWORDS:

• Sufi prose
• Sufi act
• lived experience
• post-experience
• classical Arabic literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Orfali, “Mystical Poetics,” 202.

2 See Khawāldiyya, Ṣarʿā al-taṣawwuf.

3 On farāgh as a key term in al-Niffarī’s worldviews, see e.g. Belqāsim, al-Ṣūfiyya wa-l-farāgh, 11–12.

4 See Salamah-Qudsi, Sufism, ix–xi.

5 A remarkable document for communal aspects in early Sufism, such as Sufi lodges, master-disciple relation, and funding practices is present in Abū al-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī’s al-Bayāḍ wa-l-sawād, 203–209 (association and friendship); 210–215 (funding practices); 243–247 (on travel practices).

6 Homerin, “Tangled Words,” 190.

7 See Orfali, “Mystical Poetics,” 201.

8 On Sumnūn and his poetry in recent scholarship, see Salamah-Qudsi, “Licked by Fire.”

9 See bin ʿUbayd, Tajribat al-kitāba al-ṣūfiyya; bin Yamīna, Adabiyyat al-kitāba al-ṣūfiyya.

10 See Suʿād al-Ḥakīm’s detailed discussion of the meanings and symbols of the Prophetic miʿrāj as the basis on which many Sufi texts of mystical miʿrāj relied in Ibn ʿArabī, Isrā, introduction, 19–26.

11 Asma Afsaruddin opened her paper on manāqib literature by defining this kind or writing as “a distinct genre of Islamic literature” (See Afsaruddin, “In Praise of the Caliphs,” 329). Later, Jawid Mojaddedi published his significant contribution on Sufi ṭabaqāt tradition referring to what he called “ṭabaqāt genre”; Mojaddedi drew attention to the basic literary characteristics that Sufi ṭabaqāt works share with the ṭabaqāt writings within each of the main religious traditions of Islam (See Mojaddedi, Biographical Tradition in Sufism, 1). The term “genre” was similarly used and introduced by Western scholars whose study of historiographies in early medieval Islam started with Franz Rosenthal (See Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography) and has continued with the most recent contribution of Konrad Hirschler (See Hirschler, Medieval Arabic Historiography).

12 See al-Jāḥiẓ, Ḥujaj al-nubuwwa, 273.

13 See Jeries, “al-Adab,” 55–56.

14 Cf. the detailed reference to the different interpretations of one couplet of Abū Bakr al-Shiblī which appears in his Dīwān as well as in Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj’s Kitāb al-lumaʿ at the beginning of a chapter dedicated to the ecstatic states of true Sufi masters in Salamah-Qudsi, “Sufi Prose”.

15 See Kharrāz, Rasāʾil. On Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz’s life and work see Saab, Ṣūfī Theory.

16 Abdel-Kader, Rasāʾil al-Junayd, Arabic, 2.

17 Ibid., 123.

18 See Arazi and others, “Risāla.” More recently, Salamah-Qudsi, “Exchange of letters.”

19 al-Qushayrī, Kitāb al-miʿrāj, 129–130. The English translation of this paragraph is mine.

20 Interestingly, the relevant passages relate that the people of Basṭām reported to al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿĪsā that Abū Yazīd said that he had a miʿrāj similar to that of the Prophet Muḥammad (yaqūl lahu miʿrāj kamā kāna li-l-nabiyy). No reference to the people’s acquaintance of any written document by Abū Yazīd is provided. See e.g. al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, vol. 2, 347; Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Lisān al-mīzān, vol. 4, 361; Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs iblīs, 150.

21 As for pre-modern Arabic literature in general, the autobiographical features of the available examples should be differentiated from those represented in the autobiographical examples in modern Western literature. Researchers of the pre-modern Arabic literary tradition have shown that autobiography is not a complete representation of the author’s life. Pre-modern Arabic literature also contains different autobiographical forms whose value to the study of history, politics and literature has been increasingly recognized. See e.g. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie; Rosenthal, “Die Arabische Autobiographie,” 1–40; Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self. On autobiographies in Classical Sufism, see Salamah-Qudsi, “The Will to be Unveiled,” 199–207.

22 On dreams and visions among Sufis, see e.g. Green, “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams,” 294–299. See also part II of Knysh and Felek’s Dreams and Visions, 181–296; Sirriyeh, Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam, chapter 7.

23 al-Qushayrī, Kitāb al-miʿrāj, 134. The English translation is mine.

24 Ibn ʿArabī, Isrā, 54.

25 See for instance ibid., 159–160.

26 Qushayrī, Risāla, 247–248.

27 Knysh’s translation in al-Qushayrī’s Epistle, 84–86.

28 See Patel, “Whoever Imitates a People,” 360.

29 See Salamah-Qudsi, “The Idea of Tashabbuh,” 175–197.

30 See e.g. Ibn Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, Kitāb al-zahra, vol. 1, 421; al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Muḥāḍarāt al-udabāʾ, vol. 2, 90. The word wajd in Arabic can mean either love or sorrow. See Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Rawḍat al-muḥibbīn, 25–26. See also Pomerantz, “Reading Love and Friendship,” 1–16.

31 Qushayrī, Risāla, 128.

32 See Knysh’s translation in al-Qushayrī’s Epistle, 32–33.

33 See Nāṣif, Muḥāwarāt, 121; Yūnus, Qaḍāyā, 104.

34 See Khawāldiyya, Ṣarʿā al-taṣawwuf, 240–245.

35 See Salamah-Qudsi, “Sealed Nectar.”

36 See this letter in Dhahabī, Siyar, vol. 14, 348; Ibn al-Sāʿī, Akhbār al-Ḥallāj, 123.